Do any of you seasoned pros remember feeling this way as a student?

[ashse]

I have wanted to go to nursing school for soooo long and now that I am actually a bona fide nursing student, I am worrying ahead to clinicals. Do y'all remember being nervous about clinicals and wondering if you'd be completely incompetent? I am assuming that is probably a normal fear but I'd love some reassurance.

I have always been an excellent student, book smart. (I already have a degree in another field.) But I hear the stereotype (please tell me it is a stereotype!) about book smart people failing miserably at clinicals. What has been your experience with this?

[Love-A-Nurse]

all the best to you!

[JailRN]

Good luck-I remember my first day of clinicals.(1970), we had the monumental task of giving a complete bed bath. We were instructed that when we females had a male pt. we were to bathe him except for his genitals and the soap up the washrag, hand it to the man and ask him to "finish his bath" step outside the curtain, give him a few minutes, then return.

Well, the old guy I had wasn't told of the "rules", when I asked him to finish his bath, he opened one eye, leered at me and said"no you do it for me" (and me, a 17 yr old virgin who had never SEEN male genitalia,) I ran from the curtain and smack into my instructor. (of course the drill sgt) I couldn't breathe and was in a panick wanted to run screaming for the hills, quit nursing and go home and back to bed. Her common sense prevailed, thank heavens, and I went back to finish his bath with her help.

You'll do fine if you don't cop an attitude and ask for help when you don't understand something.

Like sjoe said, none of us is born with it. Good luck.

[RoadRunner]

Don't be too hard on yourself ashse!

And guess what, we, "seasoned pros" (:chuckle), prefer any smart student who might take a minute or two more to do something because they need to understand the how and the why of it and can see the consequences, to any "speedy gonzales" who doesn't have a clue.

Trust yourself!

[ashse]

Wow, thanks so much everybody! Your comments have been so helpful. I'm feeling better about this already.

You have no idea how much it means to hear your words of wisdom and sound advice. I'm filing it all away for future reference.

[Vsummer1]

USE THE SKILLS LAB!!! This point was stressed to us in orientation yesterday. I remember my clinicals from a past school, and it was not good! I was nervous, the training they gave was inadequate to the skills I was required to perform. They did not offer an open skills lab, so what we got that one time of being shown was all we got.

The program I am in now has open lab hours where we can go in and practice what we learned in clinical lab. They have a staff person whose job is to go over these skills with us. We can either practice on the dummies, or watch the videos etc. We do this on our own time, thus mastering the skills we will need in the clinicals. This is offered as a zero unit, no cost to the student voluntary lab in addition to the required 12 hours per week in clinicals.

I was told that the average student puts in about 10 extra hours in the lab... the record was 30 hours. Of course some of your fellow students will have experience doing these things already and may be able to help you also. Those that do use the skills lab sign in and out, and our instructors can see if we made the effort. Supposedly this helps should we not be able to do something bedside, they can check to see if we took the time to try to learn it or just didn't bother. The Dean made it seem like those with no experience who didn't practice didn't do well...sort of like "we know who did and who didn't use the lab and our decisions on your performance will reflect that". So, even if we screw up if we at least tried to learn in the lab we will more likely be forgiven (my impression of it anyway).

Going from a dummy to a real person is going to make anyone nervous! Even though they check our skills prior to going to the real patients, there is a big difference!

I guess what I am saying is, use the resources offered and know that new students are nervous wrecks.

[renerian, BSN, RN]

Find me on nurse who does not have something to learn about a new piece of equipment, a new dressing, a new clinical trial outcome result.............honey we are all in the same boat-you never stop learning as health care always changes.

Hang in there..............

[renerian, BSN, RN]

Typo on previous post, meant to say find me one nurse LOL

[sjoe]

renerian: you can use the "edit" button on any post of yours you want to change.

[renerian, BSN, RN]

OMG that icon by your name is a scream.................to funny!